Saturday, October 22, 2011

A Life Well Lived

It has been fifteen years since my Father passed away. And I would like to remember him with a collection ofsome of my favorite pictures.

Papa with my Uncle Ben

Papa with Nanny and Uncle Ben

Papa with his Derby car on Broad Street

Papa with Papa T and an officer

Papa with Bess, Uncle Ben and Nanny

Lt. Charles H. Estes, Jr.

My Mom and Dad

Chuck, Elizabeth, Papa, Mother
Hope and Larry

In my Father's last dictation he reflected on the paths hecould have chosen, and now some fifty years later,it was the right path...and a life well lived.

"I had signed a contract with a company to go to South America and fly C-47s over the Andes to miningcamps back in the sticks, so to speak; they had landingfields there and I'm sure it would land a C-47 safely.But I got home and my father was running MotorParts Company all by himself, and the boy that hadworked there with him before the service, before the war,Otto Carter, he had been killed over in Australia on a mission.He was a pilot -- not a pilot but he was a gunner on a bomber,and this bomber was shot down and he was killed. Well, anyway, my father needed my help andI realized that when I saw the situation as it waswhen I got home, so I determined that I would stayaround Yazoo City, and do what I could to help him,and so I canceled the contract that I had with thesepeople and let that fly over the mountain and forgotabout it forever. But, when you stop and look back at your life andyou see how things are now, and you try to compareit to what they might have been, you don't knowwhere you would be had you taken a turn off in theroad and gone a different direction. So I'm sitting here at home and I'm talking to youElizabeth. It's hard to argue with that I took anywrong turns in my life. I seem to be ahead of thedogs even though the dogs were pretty close at times,but I'm still ahead of 'em. I'm 76 years old and myhealth is not bad, and I'm very pleased to be ableto sit here and tell you about my experiences. I hope -- this is about as far as I can go with anywar experiences that I had or anything that happened to me in my life.

My father, when he retired, turned Motor Parts Companyover to Ben and myself and we ran it until my healthwas such that I was not being a value to him, so I decidedto retire and I took the money that I got from the sale ofMotor Part, my share of Motor Parts Company and triedto invest it as wisely as I could so that I wouldn't throwit away. If I had not used it and done something worthyin a constructive way at the time that I got out, I'm surethat it would be long gone now and not helped anybody. But I managed to do some fairly wise things.Your mother and I each have a burial policy andwe have health insurance aside from our Medicare, and we have extended care so that should we get to apoint where we need to go to a convalescent homethen it's taken care of, so I feel that I've done prettywell with the money that was given to me for my sharein Motor Parts Company. I still go down there to get my mail because my mailstill goes to box 169 and that's Motor Parts Company. It makes your mother a little mad at times to think aboutme having to go down there to get my mail whenit could be sent out here, but I don't know what itwould take to change that, I'd have to write too many people.

Anyway it's been a pleasure talking to you.I hope that you can make something from what I havesaid to you, and if there anything in here that is not clearlet me know and I will be in touch with you andstraighten it out with you as closely as I can."